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Looks like just one man's opinion though. He doesn't cite any polls. I'm surprised to see Tennessee that high (10th) and Alabama that low (8th). I would have put Bama ahead of, at least, Oklahoma, Miami and Texas. Possibly as high as fourth (kicking Florida down a peg or two). And I respect the heck out of Bear Bryant. Bama? Hated? I don't see it. They're been absolutely irrelevant to most of the country for a long time now. If I had to guess the teams on this list, they probably wouldn't have been in my first 15 guesses. Miami should be higher..they've been hated by a lot of people for a long time now. Florida State should be on that list. I've still noticed a lot of hatred for Nebraska even though they haven't been on the map for awhile.

meh, if you can play left you can play right In Wrigley? From all accounts of many OF's that have ever played the corners there, that isn't true. RF is much harder to play than LF in that ballpark. I'm not exactly sure why they say that, other then that the sun is much worse on the RF than the LF. Usually Wrigley is seen as a spot where it is RF that is the hardest, CF the second hardest, and LF the easiest to play. As for Ibanez, I would be somewhat interested, but not enough to cover the price. I also don't see those two picks as a guarantee. In fact, the best thing for him personally would be to be a type B free agent, because I'm not sure he's going to receive much interest as a type A. I definitely think in Wrigley RF is harder to play than LF, but that doesnt mean that if you are a LF you cant play RF. RF in Wrigley is much much bigger than LF and the well is really deep. The sun really shouldnt be an issue because it sets over the 3rd baseline so unless you take a weird route you shouldn't be looking into it. It perhaps shouldn't be an issue, but it's the first thing that always comes up when talking about RF at Wrigley. The sun in the later parts of the day games makes it so the RF loses track of the ball quite a bit. I happen to agree with you that I don't really understand why it affects the RF and not the LF, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I think the transition from LF to RF depends on what skills you are poor at. I won't automatically dismiss Ibanez in RF, because I thought that if Floyd was bad in LF that he would be absolutely horrific in RF, and he really wasn't any worse at that than LF.

meh, if you can play left you can play right In Wrigley? From all accounts of many OF's that have ever played the corners there, that isn't true. RF is much harder to play than LF in that ballpark. I'm not exactly sure why they say that, other then that the sun is much worse on the RF than the LF. Usually Wrigley is seen as a spot where it is RF that is the hardest, CF the second hardest, and LF the easiest to play. As for Ibanez, I would be somewhat interested, but not enough to cover the price. I also don't see those two picks as a guarantee. In fact, the best thing for him personally would be to be a type B free agent, because I'm not sure he's going to receive much interest as a type A.

I would guess absolutely not. Howry might net us a pick. Eyre has pretty much no chance due to injury and ineffectiveness at times.

I thought Lou would be suspended for his contact as well. Thankfully he got off on what was pretty clearly an accident.

I think the Cubs would have to find somebody that intrigued them as a prospect. It wouldn't necessarily be a highly rated one, and it may very likely only be 1, but they'll try to find a name that they may have valued more than some other teams. If they don't find that name, they'll keep Eyre and option Cotts down to the minors for the next month when Wood comes back, and probably try to hold Lieber down the maximum number of days before bringing him up and optioning Marshall. I think they'll likely find a trading partner though. The bullpen rotation is getting a bit tight down there.

As far as I know, you can include cash in post deadline waiver deals. If the Cubs picked up half of the remainder of his contract, they could probably get a halfway decent prospect in return and be out from under the obligation. The Cubs would probably be better off keeping him picking up that much. Rotation crunches tend to dissipate rather quickly. I'm certainly not opposed to trading Marquis, but I wouldn't pick up over 3 million. And if the Cubs did pick up 3 million, he certainly will profile favorably in the offseason to the pitching market.

Well, it was actually Fred this time who posted that. But I would have if I had been awake then, so I can see why you thought it was me :D Definitely not a fan of Cedeno starting in this spot. Fukudome has better numbers against left-handers, the Cubs are better defensively with him on the field (I'd rather have Fukudome and DeRosa at RF and 2B than DeRosa and Cedeno). Plus, Fukudome has so little confidence against left-handers normally that he is very patient against them, seeing 4.58 pitches per plate appearance compared to Cedeno's 3.80 against left-handers. Against a pitcher like Sabathia, even that little difference could help. It's not really something that can be seen as winning or losing the game for the Cubs though, and it does help that the lineup is well thought out otherwise.

I actually doubt this. I don't think he got called up last September (at least he never appeared in a game). Lou was furious with him, and that will probably be one of the names Hendry mentions to Lou, Lou says he will never play him, and that's the end of that. I see Fuld as one of the names along with some of the others already mentioned in this thread. Angel Guzman as well.

Minor nitpick: Fontenot actually started 3 games at SS last year. He had a game against the Rockies, then started the Friday game of that Brewers series (the Aram homerun game). It was his 3rd start, the next day, when he was pulled after the first inning. He's definitely not anything more than an emergency option though there at this point.

any idea what the team record is in quality starts? I assume it's good, but has been dragged down recently It's broken down in the blog.

Me. But I'm probably only 70 percent on that.

Exactly vance. Really the only things you can add now are a reliever or a bench bat. Most relievers are going to be way too expensive, and the bench bat needs to wait for the waiver deadline because there isn't room for another position player on the roster. So there really isn't a good trade to be made unless someone is willing to give us a reliever for cheap. I also think that there will be another person from the minors who will help stabalize the relief core before the end of the year. I'm not sure if that will be Wuertz, Ceda, Ascanio, or somebody else, but that's not exactly rare for good relievers to appear as the season goes along.

Henry Blanco is a better hitter against left-handers than either Ward or Edmonds. He was the best hitter in that situation. Of course, if the Cubs were going to bunt, I would have put Z up in that situation. He's a little more used to bunting, and if the 3rd baseman came way in on him, then you could tell him that he could slap the ball past him.

I'm withholding judgment on this. It seems like Lou, at the very least, knows which starting pitchers he can usually ride a little bit and which ones to ease up on. Exactly..like this quote from Lou earlier: Remember that the Cubs are trying to give Harden an extra day whenever possible, and this time he had to pitch on regular rest. That's probably why they were trying to give him the short day.

He has a slider, splitter, and changeup. He probably was having a hard time deciding which pitches to stick with yesterday due to the new situation. I don't think he's quite that fastball heavy as a starter.

I think the 97-99 was just a result of A) coming out of the bullpen and B) being a little too excited. I think we'll be happier with his overall pitches if his fastball is in the 92-94 range. That was always the really confusing thing in Daytona though. That fastball should still be able to have a decent chance of blowing hitters away at that level, and it simply wasn't. That's why many people said the Cubs were forcing him to throw his offspeed stuff a good percentage of his pitches, and that's why his strikeout rate was so low. One thing I did notice was that Samardzija really didn't have any confidence in his breaking pitches in the first inning. There were several camera shots of him shaking off Soto multiple times, then throwing the fastball. He slowly started to incorporate it as he went along.

He had 110 pitches. It was time for him to go.

Ward does have an .829 OPS this year. And he's been unlucky considering 24.4% of his total balls in play have been line drives. He's still a very good hitter.

He's moved to and from the bullpen on multiple occasions over the past two years. I understand that. However, that should in no way provoke expectations that he'll magically improve by going to the pen for the big league club. He shouldn't be expected to do better at this level than he did at AAA just because he improved from AA to AAA (ignoring that he got worse from High A to AA). His AA numbers were better than his High A numbers. Less hits per 9, more strikeouts per 9, better ERA, better WHIP. His walk rate was quite a bit worse (due to one month this year where he walked the world) and his HR rate is rising, but overall he was a better pitcher in AA.

The question was never was if the Bears would pay Hester, the question is, what market do you use for him? You obviously CANNOT use the WR market to re-sign, cause Hester hasn't proven he is an NFL reciever, but offering him PR/KR is a severe insult. It wouldn't surprise me, if the two sides agree on a short extension (say 2 yrs), and if Hester shows he can be a WR, then they would renegotiate the contract to better suit the WR market. does/did PacMan Jones play WR or CB, or was he purely a returner? Pacman is a corner. He was turning into a very good one right in the last 8 games of his 2nd year, after the 1st year where his only real value was as a returner.

Apparently not. Cubs lineup Soriano Theriot Lee Ramirez Fukudome Soto Fontenot Johnson Dempster And for the Marlins Ramirez Gonzalez Cantu Jacobs Uggla Willingham Ross Hoover Johnson Nice to see DeRosa get a day off. He has bounced around enough lately that it's easy to forget that he's started a bunch of games in a row.

He was starting when he struggled though. His path in the minors has been start for a couple months, then get sent down to the bullpen for a couple weeks, then start for a couple weeks, then get promoted. Rinse and repeat. Most of his struggles at Daytona and Tennessee were when he was starting. Thank you for that quote Raisin putting me in my place :D I really thought that he had mostly abandoned the slider because it wasn't coming along like he hoped it would. But apparently that's not the case, and it's a pretty good pitch for him. It's nice to hear that velocity at Iowa as well. I'm less interested in his results this time up, but I really want to see which of his pitches are plus pitches right now against major leaguers.

Congrats to Samardzija. He's taken a lot of heat over the last year and a half (and I don't blame most of the people who did-high expectations were placed on him, and most of the information coming out didn't seem to be good). It's obvious though that he's put in a ton of work to continue to develop his secondary pitches, and that has paid off in this promotion. While I don't expect a lot from him right now, this will hopefully be just a nice little taste of the big leagues that he can use to further refine his stuff and become a good starter up here in a year or year and a half. I'm definitely excited to see his debut.

To be honest, I still don't understand why a split would be the best thing. I've been rooting for a sweep the whole time, and while I preferred a Cardinals sweep, a Brewers sweep isn't too bad either. Brewers sweep is bad because they're much better than the Cardinals. In some ways that means it's bad. In other ways you kind of want the inferior team to get swept. If the Cardinals keep playing badly, the Cubs shot of being in the playoffs just keep going up and up. If the Brewers had gotten swept, there would still be a worry that they would go on a run and make it a true 3 team race. If it were just a division race, I definitely would hate a Brewers sweep. But in this situation, it really isn't that bad.